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MAR 13 2007 (THE SILENT GUEST) Sorry loyal readers, I've got nothing to post. Still listening to great music every single day, but I just can't write anything usable about it, and, as you may have noticed, I never publish anything until it's at least barely usable. As far as what I should be writing about, and possibly would be writing about if only I didn't have to sleep or go to work all the time, well, there are about 150 records of varying formats stacked in various piles within 5 feet of where I'm sitting, and I'd say at least, oh, 110 of 'em deserve a review immediately, because lots of 'em are damn good, and even the worst of 'em are at least notable. Problem is, I.....can't.....really.....seem.....to....... write......reviews......ever. Have you noticed? But, like they always say these days, if you can't review 'em, list 'em, and here's a few titles of interest from right in front of me, stacked between the keyboard and the monitor. Random stuff from all over the place (NO SCENE), and quite a few of these are very good: Religious Knives Remains, The Psychic Paramount Origins and Primitives vol. 1+2 (disc 2 especially), Michael Hurley Armchair Boogie, Anahita Arcana en Cantos, United Bible Studies The Shore That Fears The Sea, Cherry Blossoms (forthcoming LP), Sapat Mortise and Tenon, Lee Marshall s/t, Killick Erik Hinds/Dennis Palmer/Bob Stagner A.S.A.P. Wings, Richard Pryor Anthology, The Move Message to the Country, White Mice Efil4zaggin or whatever it's called, Eric Gaffney Uncharted Waters, Aufgehoben Messidor, Mic Mulligan & S. Future Original Space Neighbors, Radio Shock "Burn Down Radio" EP, 2673/Unicorn split, Larkin Grimm The Last Tree, Kawaguchi Masami New Rock Syndicate, Foot Village Fuck the Future, AND here's a little stack of weird cassettes -- let's see, we've got Warmth s/t, Buffle s/t, Blues Control/Guns & Roses split cassingle, Drop Out demo (a blast, as tipped by Tonya Loiterman), The Ray Pacino Ensemble Be My Lonely Night (best thing from the last Lal Lal Lal batch besides the Armas Huutamo 7-inch! Okay, I'll admit it, I liked the Javelin 7-inch too...), Sick Hour (s/t on Animal Disguise, damn good!) and Glass Bath Grey Gardens (everything on Ides so far has hit the spot, especially Climax Denial Sexuality is a Curse, Crib Death Nursery, and Skull Erection Towards Failure....also wanna say thanks to Ides for their much appreciated Chicago event listings page, carrying on where Savage Sound Syndicate sadly left off....) And finally, in case we go another 12 days before our next post (and I wouldn't be surprised if we do), I should tell you real quick that I saw Blues Control play a show a couple nights ago and it was totally weird and great. On top of being truly unique retro-futuristic heavy psychedelia (that's the part I expected), the visuals of their setup combined with the sonics to make me think of all kinds of unexpected things, like various beats & rhythms heard from passing cars.....cheap-keyboard entertainment in the neon-lit backs of inner-city restaurants...... all the details you might find inside a pawn shop or bodega.... what can I say, it is definitely some new kind of urban music. On record it works a little differently, just a beautiful creepy majestic haze, and within the haze lurks much more than the usual stoner droner, because Blues Control are actually playing MUSIC in there. Their new LP Puff is so good that even this review is no exaggeration. Maybe someday I'll tell you more about it, but in the meantime I highly recommend finding out for yourself. They're still on tour (including a SXSW show with an awesome lineup, see all dates below, Feb 25 post) and they've got copies for sale. At least they might still have copies with 'em -- they sold 7 in Chicago, and there were maybe only 15 people at the show! If you do miss 'em on tour, check with the record label Woodsist... MARCH 15 2007 (THE WHISPERING LEGIONS) LOOK MA, I WROTE TWO REVIEWS!
SPECTRE
FOLK
POREST MAR 21 2007 (DAY OF VESTIGES) OH YEAH, THE OTHER TWO TAPES THAT ABANDON SHIP RECORDS HAS PUT OUT ARE REAL GOOD TOO....
MAR 24 2007 (DAY OF RURIK)
On the Day of Rurik I should be givin' props to Brian Ruryk, the greatest noise guitarist of all-time from Canada, if not the entire world. But instead check out this Charalambides vid on YouTube, playing some of their best music ever, live in San Antonio just last week. Old pros! Good singin', good guitar playin'. And don't miss Part 2 of the set, Christina's vocals are beyond. Thanks to Womblife for the tip! ........ And oh snap, here's a tip of my own: the Warmer Milks acoustic trio opening for the Charalambides at the same gig! Diggin' that room, and the cinematography is nice too -- thanks to narikiri for the good work. No matter what they try, and they try a lot, WM never fail....more on that soon, I'm sure.... MAR 25 2007 (DAY OF SWEGDE) LIVE
ON WBLSTD (77.7 FM CHICAGO) Some car blasting "Cross-Eyed Mary" by Jethro Tull keeps driving around the block. Every 30 seconds or so Ian Anderson flute trills come and go in the distance. Totally epic. MAR 26 2007 (DAY OF SVAVA) DAMN,
CHECK OUT THESE BADASSES! And, since last time I listed a bunch of YouTube clips I included, for some reason, one non-video link regarding Jessica Rylan (aka Can't), I thought I'd continue the tradition: this is probably the best thing anyone has written about her music. AND THIS JUST IN FROM BARRY DEAN (Stuckometer/Hearing Aid): Hi Larry, A while ago I had the habit of going through you tube and searching out clips of folk musics from different part of the world, sufi chanting and prayer, java & bali gamelan, buddist monks chanting, mongolian throat singing, eastern european and russian folk song, muslim call to prayer, indian qwalli, and more, here's the list: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=FEF18DBE11AEC566 Hope you're into it, Best, Barry Hell yeah I'm into it! Much better than cable..... MAR 31 2007 (DAY OF THE EVERLASTING MORAINE)
APR 1 2007 (DAY OF THE MARAUDERS)
APR 2 2007 (DAY OF THE HOLY MOUNTAIN)
Just
a quick reminder about May 1.... APR 15 2007 (DAY OF YNGVE)
APR 17 2007 (DAY OF GOTALAND) LIVE
ON WBLSTD (777.666 FM CHICAGO) APR 20 2007 (MAELSTROM)
And hey, the West Coast may be blowing up with Bad Trips and Wooden Shjips, but if you're into those bands as much as you should be, well, then you've got to be into Ohio's long-running Fuzzhead too. I've told you before, and I'll probably tell you again, Fuzzhead recently released two CDR albums, Raining Sparks and Burning Bridges (recorded a week apart in late 2005 and early 2006) that do the same flowing-psych thing as the Trips and Shjips, and they do it just as well. Even if you don't agree, you will enjoy their excellent rock rhythm section and great guitar playing anyway. Try their MySpace page?.....I know this post about some of the best guitar-band psych-rock of today is breaking from this issue's developing 'cassette label' theme, but don't worry, we'll be getting back to it.....and in the meantime why not take a look at the first stages of Cassette Gods..... APR 24 2007 (DAY OF THE GAMELAN)
APR 25 2007 (DAY OF NIAGRA)
That's right folks, it was 42 years ago today, a couple years before Sgt. Pepper taught that goddamn band to play, when the Theater of Eternal Music (Cale, Conrad, MacLise, Young, and Zazeela) played a particularly brutal drone music session in New York City. It was roughly recorded by....somebody, and 35 years later in 2000, roughly licensed by some unknown person to the Table of the Elements label for a CD release. I think I'll put it on, for the first time in a few years.... and daaammmn. I mean, when I first heard it in 2000 I couldn't believe how harsh & gross the music was, but even now that I've heard Wolf Eyes and Hair Police and Carlos Giffoni and whomever else, I still can't believe it. Hell, this 42-year-old jam makes Double Leopards sound like Def Leppard, as in "Love Bites." (Just kidding, of course, that wasn't supposed to make any sense, but Niagra is seriously a heavy piece.) APR 27 2007 (DAY OF KALIMANTAN)
I mentioned a couple weeks ago how much I've been listening to Daniel (A.I.U.) Higgs's album Ancestral Songs....any album with an opening song that repeats phrases like "Lucifer the child-bride of the Christ" is going to get some attention, but it's not just the words, it's the way he sings them and plays the song on acoustic guitar, because the ringing sounds and images clear out enough quiet and charged imaginal space that the listener actually gets a nice long opportunity to reflect on what the phrase might mean to him or her right now, especially in combination with such mantras as "Living in the kingdom of death." Higgs has always worked like that, in and out of Lungfish. And don't even get me started on how much imaginal space he clears with the 10-minute psychedelic jews-harp and (Stavis-worthy!) banjo improvisations that are on here too....for these tour dates he's playing with fellow sometime Baltimorean and Heresee family member Chiara Giovando, which should be interesting to say the least, and they are opening for those My Bloody Valentine fans in Brightblack Morning Light.....I shoulda gotta babysitter..... DANIEL
(A.I.U.) HIGGS/CHIARA GIOVANDO Fri Apr 27 Empty Bottle Chicago IL Daniel A.I.U. Higgs & Chiara Giovando duo w/ Brightblack Morning Light (hey, that's tonight, hurry!) Sat Apr 28 Asterisk Gallery Cleveland OH Daniel A.I.U. Higgs & Chiara Giovando duo w/ Matthew Wascovich, Andrew Klimek, Ted Flynn, Ha Ha La Sun Apr 29 Belvedere's Pittsburgh PA Daniel A.I.U. Higgs & Chiara Giovando duo w/ Shep and Me Mon Apr 30 Soundlab Buffalo NY Daniel A.I.U. Higgs & Chiara Giovando duo w/ Brightblack Morning Light Wed May 02 Eclectic House Middletown CT Daniel A.I.U. Higgs & Chiara Giovando duo w/Brightblack Morning Light Fri May 04 SMOG Annandale-On-Hudson NY Daniel A.I.U. Higgs & Chiara Giovando duo w/Brightblack Morning Light Sat May 05 Mercury Lounge New York NY Daniel A.I.U. Higgs & Chiara Giovando duo w/Brightblack Morning Light Sun May 06 Southpaw Brooklyn NY Daniel A.I.U. Higgs & Chiara Giovando duo w/ Brightblack Morning Light MAY 3 2007 (BRIDGE OF DREAD) Sightings are going on tour starting tonight (Thursday May 3) at the Glasslands in Brooklyn, NY. I found this out because I just happened across their MySpace page, and man, you gotta check out the new as-of-yet unreleased song "Newports" they've got up there. They're definitely getting into some new territory, obviously in the vocals, but in other aspects too. And they've always been an excellent live band.... 3 May 2007
Glasslands Brooklyn, New York MAY 8 2007 (DAY OF THE TOWER) LIVE
ON WBLSTD (777.666 FM CHICAGO) MAY 14 2007 (FIFTH DAY OF THE ZENITH) "last minute show this Wednesday 5/16 Magik
Markers you know them... fresh from recording
sessions with Lee Ranaldo Silent Barn/Raven's
Den MAY 18 2007 (DAY OF THE OKAPI) AND THE EARLY CONTENDERS FOR ALBUM OF THE YEAR ARE.....
MAY 19 2007 (DAY OF THE IMPALA) AND THE EARLY CONTENDERS FOR SINGLE OF THE YEAR ARE.....
There's no way I can pick single of the year, any year. I’ve got over fifty 7" records piled up here, and since I’m not Doug Mosurak there’s no way they’re ALL gonna even get listened to, let alone reviewed. I’ll tell you the ones that keep rising to the top, though (even though they might all be from 2006 for all I know)….first place has gotta go to this D. Charles Speer record because these two songs simply will not leave my conscious mind alone. I’ve been drawling the opening line of the B-side "Canaanite Builder" (“If you build the waaaalll to Jericho….”) more times per day than I can count on my fingers and toes. I just mumble the rest of the words -- either I can't make 'em out when I'm listening or I can't remember 'em when I'm not. I can mumble the chorus real good though, including the demented/inspired background "oooh-ooooh" vocals that had me laughing out loud during one particular moment of clarity. I'm hearing some Meat Puppets II but others have said Jerry Jeff Walker, so who really cares, especially when you go back to side one, "Past or Beyond," the song that has grown on me the most. It starts as elegant and stately as a song from an imaginary western with the line "When you go see Randolph Healy," beautifully sung in that heartworn highway style, but the next line turns things around a bit by locating Mr. Healy in "Psych ward room 302," and the song continues to get stranger from there, without ever losing its elegance. I think this is Dave Shuford of the No Neck Blues Band singing, doing a real nice job -- the record is released by NNCK in-house label Sound@1, and goddamn, this D. Charles Speer band might be the hottest of their various conduits right now.... I'm gonna hafta go ahead and get their new LP, aren't I?
MAY 20 2007 (DAY OF THE ELK)
Another No Fun Fest has come and gone -- pictures by Michael Muniak here (and please don't miss this one!)...... Speaking of "don't miss" on "the web," Blastitude highly recommends the "Konspiracy Korner" series of essays by Elvis DeMorrow. These are designed as live radio pieces for the top-notch weekly 'news' show This Is Hell on WNUR 89.3FM Evanston-Chicago, but Elvis writes up print versions of some and they are archived here at nodoctors.com. His most recent piece on record-setter Seung-Hui Cho is a real doozy, permalinked here. Not your run-of-the-mill conspiracy mongering, Elvis's pieces always remind us that something doesn't have to be true to be enlightening, and that no matter how strange the fiction gets, the truth is usually even more fucked-up..... look for Origin & Tectonics, the 3rd full-length by No Doctors, coming very soon on June 1..... "Tonight the last big Window Wall television in the neighborhood went dark for good....we saw whole blocks of boarded up buildings burning in Los Angeles. Of course, no one would waste water trying to put such fires out." How to have a depressing weekend dept.: when already in the middle of reading Octavia E. Butler's book Parable of the Sower, about the tenuous survival of a walled suburban Los Angeles neighborhood in a very bleak post-automobile post-climate change year 2024, make sure you watch Alfonso Cuaron's masterful film Children of Men, about a ray of hope in a very bleak vision of a terrorist and immigrant-focused police-state London in 2027. Butler and Cuaron's visions taken together are so carefully drawn and well-researched and complimentary that I'm wondering why I'm writing about records for Blastitude right now when I obviously should be learning to grow my own food and shoot guns instead. I do it because my late-capitalist lifestyle currently allows me to spend leisure time loving packages of recorded music, but load shedding could put a real damper on that when it becomes ongoing United States policy, and that could be in, I don't know, two years?..... fuck it, I still need to tell you that Poor School of Missoula, Montana has released Voor Niets In Zijn, a total scorcher of a CDR on the Netherlands "cemetary psychedelics" label Cut Hands. Once the first track started grinding out of the speakers with it's destroyed flowing guitar, blasted sax landscapes, and minimal/monumental doom-drumming, I was like "When did I put in Clear to Higher Time? And why is it playing at 16 RPM?" Then I remembered that it must be that Poor School disc with the killer comicbook-style B&W artwork and the non-traditional slim snapcase (pictured). Seriously, this opening track (no titles) is one for the ages. The lineup is sax, drums, and guitar and it indeed sounds like some kind of totally-amped Borbetomagus/Dead C collaboration..... and so does the new Burning Star Core CD called Operator Dead....Post Abandoned, for that matter, when it's not sounding like some kind of grooving monstrous mutant reimagining of "Go Ahead John" by Miles Davis, or every krautrock group extant in 1971 playing all at once. It's just that incredible Yeh/Beatty/Tremaine power trio, at it again, and here a quartet thanks to the heavy addition of Mike Shiflet on computer, electronics, and voice (the label is No Quarter)..... and by the way, in other pre-dystopian record-love news, I'm up to about three spins a night on that Cherry Blossoms LP....... MAY 30 2007 (DAY OF THE MUSHROOM)
So, in case you forgot or hadn't noticed, the theme for this issue has more or less been tape labels. I kind of stopped doing it for awhile, but now the theme is back for a grand finale of sorts, which is gonna double as a writeup on the New Brunswick New Jersey Noise Scene. Cuz I've got four, count 'em, four cassettes sitting here on New Brunswick's Leaf Leaf Records label, and sitting right next to 'em, by coincidence, is a tape by the Human Adult Band, and they are also from New Brunswick. And then on top of that, the Bone Tooth Horn label -- also from New Brunswick -- just sent a box with TWELVE goddamn cassettes in it. So that's, um, seventeen tapes I've got sitting here to be listened to, on three different labels, and yes, they are all from New Brunswick. I'll start with Leaf Leaf Records, which means that this is actually going to be a Car Commercials writeup for a minute, because not only are three of these four tapes by them (the other one is by Friends & Family and I haven't listened to it yet), they also sent along their debut 45 RPM 7" vinyl record. And there's nothing wrong with making this a Car Commercials writeup for a minute, because they are one of the more confounding-yet-addictive bands I've come across so far this year. Those magic letters "DIY" get mentioned a lot when this band is discussed, along with a whole bunch of 1980s bands with ridiculous names. I've never heard of any of 'em, but I still get it, man, because Car Commercials fly the 'weird post-punk' and 'home taper' flags way high, and these three tapes they've released are all NUTS. They have absurd titles (Grant's Dead, The Medium's Necklace, and A Young Victoriaville), and I swear each one is about 60 minutes long, filled to the brim with dead air, mumblings, strange guitar, cryptic sketchings, and spastic shouting like in an early John Waters movie. It's all lurking in a remote corner of a house somewhere (definitely a parents' house), basically trying NOT to be music but weird songs and other tangentially related bursts of expression do slip out every now and then anyway. One of these guys is Daniel DiMaggio of Home Blitz fame, but that band sounds like goddamn Journey compared to this stuff. The vinyl, a four-song EP entitled Jar, is a perfect distillation of the sketched-out sprawl of the tapes, somehow packing into its compact running time what feels like as many question marks, ringing detuned dead-ends, AND sudden suburbane rock&roll woogie-boogie heads. Start there and then grab any of the tapes if you dare.
And yep, like I said up there, New Brunswick tape cassette label Bone Tooth Horn sent this crazy box containing twelve different releases. I probably won’t get to all of 'em, but we’ll see what shakes out…..I’ll start with this King Darves tape because he’s the only guy out of the twelve I’ve heard before. When I first heard the King a few years ago, he was doing some strong-but-basic tabletop-guitar-freenoise type stuff, but a couple years later he had changed gears completely into impressively deep rich singer-songwriter stuff. This tape is kind of a little of both, side one being an impressive instrumental drone/krautrock piece. It’s great, actually. Side two gets into the singer-songwriter stuff, with the King accompanying himself on chord organ as well as guitar. It sounds like it was recorded outside, with wind fluttering against the mic – lo-fi and broken-sounding, also with a more casual and singing-and playing approach, which makes this tape feel kind of on-the-fly and 'demo' compared to the accomplished-sounding CDR from a year or two ago on the Kitty Play label. (Actually, I am a moron drowning in tape-label minutae. The tape is not "Keep by King Darves", it's a split cassette between a band called Keep and King Darves. What I described as "impressive instrumental drone/krautrock....great, actually" is the side by Keep.)...... Next I listened to a tape by Door called Sorry Motherfuckin' Dogs, and I’m not even sure what it was. Noisy experiments or experimental noise? Not very long. It was interesting. It was creative. It was lo-fi and sounded far-away and distant. Although the actual content was nothing like Car Commercials, it had that Car Commercials distant clatter feel, which must be a ‘New Brunswick thing', right?..... GT Performers, on their tape Slam Cic Recamor, also approach things a lot like Car Commericals, in that they spend most of their tape trying NOT to play music, just weird broken-static spitting sounds that come and go, with occasional nerd-prov outbursts, and even more occasional nerd ‘vocals’ (maybe even songs), but then once or twice full-on Harry Pussy-style kill-rock emerges too. So they’re kinda unpredictable (and yeah, I just realized that the name of their tape is "Car Commericals" all jumbled up -- are these people fucking with me or what??)..... The Asps tape is pretty great, a study in sublime buzzing (side A) and sublime humming (side B) that never gets too relaxed nor too agitated. Cool titles too: “Croc Pit” b/w “Star Beast.” I can’t figure out who Asps are, or if they’re even from New Jersey, and that’s even after 60 seconds of google-searching. It's funny, I keep getting stuff about snakes. Actually, I keep getting stuff about the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Who cares, the tape is out of print anyway, like most of these are....... Next I went for this tape by Jenny Haniver called Glossopetrae, in hopes that it would be a girl named Jenny Haniver making the sounds. And indeed it may be a girl, but somehow I doubt her name is Jenny Haniver. And I think I'm about to lose my lunch. (I got this info from over at Smooth Assailing, who are also doing a whole bunch of Bone Tooth Horn-related reviews, wherein they have revealed that this noise-recording Jenny Haniver is the one and only King Darves, and he is not a girl.) None of which is quite as important as the fact that this tape rules. Solo electronic-crunch space grind rarely sounds this good, and it's a C24 so it doesn’t wear out its welcome..... Next in the box is a C20 split between Skeleton Warrior and Rods of God. The Skeleton Warrior side is called “Come Alive” and the Rods of God side is called “Beef Veins,” and it might take you as long to feel confident about THAT as it will to listen to the Skeleton Warrior side, which is some live-before-an-audience rumbling squealing crumpled-metal factory-hell stuff. Nothing you haven’t heard before but it hits the spots anyway because it's DONE REAL WELL. As an added bonus, someone, somewhere in the din, seems to be playing Eddie Van Halen licks for a couple minutes. The Rods of God cut is a little less overtly derived from crumpled sheet metal, but it’s still damn heavy, perhaps even as heavy as the band's name......and I guess that's where I stop. Six out of twelve cassettes isn't too bad, and it's an appropriately unfinished way to end this celebration of the new cassette release because there's just SO DAMN MANY OF 'EM.... may they continue to rain down on my head, and while I'm digging my way out you can always go to Cassette Gods for more tape talk.....
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One
of 'em is Reticent to Manifest by (VxPxC).
Now, I wasn't sure what to think about this new-on-the-scene Los
Angeleno band, mainly because they put their name inside parentheses,
but also because the first time I ever heard about 'em was last
month in 
And
the third inaugural Abandon Ship release is a tape by Quetzalcoatl
and it's called Vast Eternity Bridges.
I could swear that Quetzalcoatl was one of The Skaters' solo names
for about a minute back in 2005, but maybe I'm just thinking of
Teotihuacan. And either way, this ain't no Skater, it's a guy
from Ireland named Tim Hurley. Side One does sound fairly Skaters-esque,
though less feral and loopy, a nice chilled-out ghost-drone that
actually had me talking about handing out the first Blastitude
Popol Vuh Award in a while. Side Two, however, moves away from
Vuh-sound into something a little darker and edgier. Or does it?
Some sections are gorgeous, others are weird and uncomfortable.
I've listened to it twice but can't really peg it. That's a good
thing, so I'll look for more from this Irishman, and more from
Speaking
of The Skaters, I was at 
And
before we part ways, I've been meaning to tell you, no segue necessary:
Bob Dylan's World Gone Wrong, quickly recorded
and quietly released in 1993 for contractual obligation, is one
of his best albums ever (we're talking tied for seventh place,
at least). It's a covers album, all traditional songs, but he's
always done that -- his most recent album Modern Times
is practically 39% a covers album, and his (underrated) very first
album Bob Dylan is like 83% a covers album, so what's
wrong with 100% from 1993, especially when it sounds like it could
be 0%? Just Bob and an acoustic guitar from beginning to end,
and even though his vocals have that distinct since-1990s buzz/bray,
which can be more than a little bone-chilling when singing about
murders and tragedies, this is some of the most gorgeous stuff
he's ever done. And you get it right in the first song, the title
track, with its humongous chorus hook ("I can't be good
to yoooooouuuuu.....honey in a world gone wrong") followed
by that little guitar lilt every time, and the song right after
it, "Love Henry," with the soft way he sings the line
"I can't get down and I shan't get down"....
and much, much more....it's deep.....I'm digging Dylan's elusively
information-rich liner notes too....and with the sparse setting
it's impossible to deny that he's really an interesting guitar
player....
Gotta
give some props to 
there's
The Brain Band, a bi-coastal one-shot (?) summit
between big names (around here at least) Karl Bauer (aka Axolotl),
Elisa Ambrogio (you know her, right?), Glenn Donaldson and Donovan
Quinn (from the Skygreen Leopards et al). Two side-longers, the
first built around raw live and blown-out ensemble drone singing,
and not a whole lot else except errant caveman (caveperson?) drums,
harsh concrete-bunker acoustics, and burned (group) mind. Side
two adds guitars and more, which blends with the singing to create
a really dense sound. The more I listen, the more surprised I
get, and the band-name seems well-chosen -- this is a really mental
release of sublimated drone hysteria......And last but not least
from
Fuck It Tapes comes Interiors by Warmer
Milks. Now I'm sure that you, the regular Blastitude
reader, already think that I just automatically praise everything
the Milks do, but believe me, every single time I first put on
one of their new releases, or see them play a show, I'm so sure
they're gonna blow it that I'm practically flinching. I always
figure THIS will be the time -- they're gonna get TOO weird and
go TOO far and they're gonna totally fuck it up. But they never
have. Not even once, not even close. And definitely not with Interiors.
The first cut is called "The Hold," and it's the most
non-sequitir 10-minute tape-rumble album-opener since whatever
that was at the beginning of the Dead C's Tusk. Then
comes 3 or 4 more beautiful non sequitirs (with a tape flip somewhere
in the middle) -- Alvarius B-style acoustic guitar instro-sketch,
creepy whispering, toy-keyboard muzak, and whatever else I zoned
out too much to notice....... Alright, so go check out 
crowning
achievement thus far, as already mentioned a few posts ago, is
the Puff LP by Blues Control.
From the front cover to the back cover to the very last run-out
groove, this thing is perfection. People talk about how Noise
has gotten big in the 2000's, and it's true, but as far as I'm
concerned it's only as a subset of what has really gotten big
in the 2000s, and that's psychedelic music, okay? I don't have
a cute new genre name for it or anything, it's just psychedelic
music, and it's darker, noisier, and more wide-ranging than ever.
Which is more or less where Puff comes in. I could be
cheeky and say that it riffs on the middle ground between the
Dead C and Deep Purple, but it's a lot deeper than that, and it's
a lot more simple 
than
too. Really, you just have to hear it.....One more from Woodsist
is the Night Wounds LP called Allergic
to Heat. The excellent cover art is not unlike Puff's,
but the music of Night Wounds is quite a bit different. They're
an L.A. band with a young/wild aggro-pound guitar-slash approach
that reminds me a little of Chicago's Coughs, but Night Wounds
extend the form significantly with complex and patient structures,
and a strange harmonic vocabulary that has a real melancholic
heft. On Side 2 it really opens up, most notably during the long
last cut "X.O.T.", in which the guitar scorches the
desolate earth, the percussion becomes the babelogue among the
displaced masses, and then a galloping groove fearlessly emerges
to gather them all up and take them to a new home, flames licking
at their heels right up until they slam the door shut behind them.
Seriously, it's a pretty good LP....
And
we continue our Springtime Focus On New Cassette Labels with 
cassette
itself, there's a skull on the cover, and it's pretty fuckin'
good......Also on DFT and PFG is Gone to Ground
by 
Also
in the Deep Fried Tapes package, but not claiming to be on any
particular label, comes Brown One (The Bathrobe Demos),
a curious release in a small brown paper sack by a group called
ScummO))). Alright, an anonymous parody release!
I thought only RRRon still did those. Thing is, ScummO))) actually
sound quite a bit like SunnO))), more like a respectful imitation
than a piss-take, and in fact, they're pretty good. Actually,
now that I read the fine print, the joke is that they do it all
with really small amps instead of really big amps. A "technical
rider" comes with the tape that lists the equipment -- a
often totally true....... After all this interesting and varied
Deep Fried activity, the label's 
Today's
cassette label of note is 
Hearing Aid 02, a self-titled tape by 
by
And
hey, one more from Stuckometer -- a split LP
with a French group called Agripon, on a French
label called 
Hey,
Grady Runyan is back. For some of you that name will need no introduction,
but I'll tell the rest that he was the psychedelic lead guitarist
extraordinaire for what are honestly two of the most scorching
rock bands from the last 20 years, 
.....Puff
by Blues Control (Woodsist) and Guitar Music of the Western
Sahara by Group Doueh (Sublime Frequencies), of course, but
what else? Well, one album I think I've already listened to more
than either of those is Cleaning the Mirror
by Pink Reason (
rock.
Or something like that......and of course there's the long-awaited
debut LP by
The Cherry Blossoms. This weird and joyous large-ensemble
cracked-folk band has been spoken of in not-so-hushed tones for
a few years now....I remember their appearance at the 
Coming
in at a very close second is the great debut 7" by the Nothing
People, on 
I
realize that you probably heard about all these records months
ago, and that the Homostupids of Cleveland, Ohio
and their Brutal Birthday EP 7"
on Richie Records is no different, but of course
it's up here too. I mean jeez, if the Homostupids hadn't come
along in 2006, it would've been necessary for 2006 to invent them.
You know, 2006, the year of the weird DIY 7-inch, AND the year
that punk came back from the future, more sick and diseased than
ever? This one-sided 7" EP is just gross, and you'll hear
it immediately on the minute-long opening song "Having a
Houseguest," with its paranoid and lewd Russell Mael-style
vocals twisted by gross FX pedals while cheapo buzz-saw guitars
pound out the song and drum machines fall over themselves to gallop
the rhythm. There's four more on this one side, all short (obviously),
at least two more sick misanthropunk grinders and one or two instrumentals,
brief retardy-dink keyboard respites. And the cheap paper sleeve
it comes in looks and feels perfect. 
Also
from Richie Records comes my first exposure to
the rather notorious Clockcleaner, the "Frogrammer"
b/w "Early Man" 7". I loved the 
Remember
that New York band the Liars? While they're off in Berlin reinventing
themselves every couple years, their former bassist Pat Noecker
has found himself in a Brooklyn-based band that is very inventive
indeed, no "re-" necessary. The name is These
Are Powers and they've put out a 3-song 7" on the
I
could go on because there are more good ones, but I've been working
on this post for like five weeks and if I don't publish it now
I probably never will. Just one more highly recommended single
before I go, by the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble (actually
a 10-inch, but it does have just two songs and plays at 45 RPM).
I first mentioned this 9-piece band in Blastitude back in 2003,
after stumbling across them playing on the sidewalks of downtown
Chicago. That was before I even knew that 8 of the 9 were the
sons of Phil Cohran, former trumpeter for Sun Ra (1958-1961),
founding member of the AACM, founder and leader of the mighty
African Heritage Ensemble, now 80 years old and still playing
great music solo every Friday night at the Ethiopian Diamond restaurant
(6120 N. Broadway, Chicago), just a few blocks from where I sit
and type. The members of Hypnotic moved to NYC in 2005 and have
recently been seen backing up none other than Mos Def at the Lincoln
Center and the Brooklyn Academy of Music -- check out
The
Rock Camp 4 Girls tape by Human
Adult Band is one of the best albums I've heard in a
year and it doesn't even have a cover. It is spraypainted, but
who needs artwork and liner notes anyway when you've got these
kinds of SOUNDS -- rhythm-heavy sludge-tunes navigating through
absolute detuned murk -- zombie viking moans coming and going
according to deep subliminal logic -- haunted piledriving ghost
music. Compares real well to some of Violent Students' more wiped-out
moments -- after all they only live like 60 miles apart, which
probably makes them both part of some kind of NJ-PA sludge rock
scene! I could even add that they sound like "Hawkwind meets
something else awesome" but let's just say "rules"
this time instead. 
